In a NP story examining some of the content at Mohamed Elmasry’s website The Canadian Charger, Joseph Brean describes how one particular article, which described Christopher Hitchens’ cancer as “something to be celebrated”, “raises questions about whether such alternative online media, with their famously low costs and wide reach, are capable of holding itself to common standards of decency.” The more important question, though, might be about what sort of people are teaching in our universities, inasmuch as Joshua Blakeney, the author of the article, holds the title of Media Coordinator of Globalization Studies at the University of Lethbridge.
Here’s what Blakeney had to say about 9/11:
Without the implausible and wholly debunked official explanation of 9/11—in particular the notion that the highly sophisticated implosions of the WTC towers were planned, funded, and executed by autonomous Islamic fundamentalists—Hitchens’ already tenuous defenses of the 9/11 wars would be bereft of any legitimacy.
He goes on to describe the notion that Islamic fundamentalists hijacked passenger jets and flew them into buildings as “the implausible and wholly debunked official explanation,” and teaches “It is…a sad and irrefutable fact that a number of Mossad agents…were arrested in the New Jersey area after they were seen celebrating the 9/11 attacks.”
He’s not the only moonbat at the University of Lethbridge, as it turns out: Anthony J. Hall, Professor of Globalization Studies, also fully qualifies. Hall, who can be seen and heard here on CBC radio campaigning in defense of Mohawk activist Splitting The Sky, after Mr. Sky was arrested for disturbing the peace for shouting agitatedly in a sidewalk lineup that Canadian police officers must arrest George W. Bush, is inspired by Che Guevara, whose “stylish, avant-garde appeal continues to defy the grey stereotypes of stiff conformity and austerity colouring popular perceptions of Soviet-style communism” and Hugo Chavez.
Here’s the learned professor’s take on the events of 9/11:
Given what Griffin and others have already publish (sic) there is no remaining shred of credibility left to the notion that the hit on the Pentagon together with the pulverization of three steel-frame World Trade Center towers was caused simply by a handful of Saudis armed only with box cutters, a smattering of flight training and intense jihadist zeal.
Anyone who has kids thinking of attending the University of Lethbridge should take great pains to steer them in some other direction. Read Joshua Blakeney’s article, carefully peruse the U of L’s Globalization Studies prospectus – seriously, do – and watch Professor Hall’s damnably dense, zealous, obnoxious, almost juvenile performance on CBC, and try to reconcile all that with the University of Lethbridge’s motto: Fiat Luxor – “Let there be light.”
What a joke. What’s the Latin phrase for “Let there be defunding“?
“[T]he linked regimes of George Bush and Ralph Klein.”
Now that’s funny!
Though desperately sad and pathetic of course – linking a modestly notable provincial premier with the leader of a global superpower. I guess that’s the Alberta tinfoil hat brigade’s way to “think globally, act locally”.
I suppose it could have been worse: linking George W. Bush with the mayor of Bouctouche, New Brunswick in some Freemason/Zionist plot to sell the province to Halliburton or something.
Hilarious!
Wonder how these nutters would cope if the Jews did not exist? To think this lunatic holds a teaching post at any establishment is disgusting, since it confirms his incompetence for such a position.
In the article he called Christopher Hitchens a neo con. I guess that makes him a Neo Commie.
It must drive this truther nuts to live in the oil sands capital of the world. Where after all these years of Conservative rule, another party is finally challenging it. Unfortunately for him the party is more conservative then the one in power.
Speaking of Ralph Kline things have been mighty boring around here since he left.
And given that these guys are so enamoured with Chavez and defenders of Islamism this seems appropriate.
http://wtopnews.com/?nid=25&sid=2029721
Kind of scarey actually.
I’m sure they’ll figure out that the floods in Pakistan are because their great and peaceful Prophet is angry with the believers for not fighting harder to rid the world of Infidels and teach that to their students.
May the peace of the chosen ones be upon them.
To think these scumbags are teaching many of our young people. Many of them believe this bunk and it is no wonder many of them are screwed up leftists.
Like my one of my son-in-laws said when he was subjected to this crap at the University of Saskatchewan about fie years ago, ” I just ignore it”. But how many drink the kool aid?
I just read through Blakeney’s unintelligible blog (so you wouldn’t have to) and came upon this posting in which he implies that 5,000 residents of Louisiana were shot by the U.S. Military.
What a nutter! Yet, once this twit gains tenure, he’ll be on the public dole for life.
Anyone reading this in sunny Alberta should contact their MLA (whether Wildrose, PC or the also-rans) and ask why we are funding these anti western-civilisation marxist loons.
Also demand we defund crap like this. Ask them to sponsor a motion to axe U of L funding by 20% or more, and we will certainly get their attention.
This is not academic freedom of opinion, this is coddling useless imbeciles with public funding.
Your grandma has to wait a year for her hip surgery, but we can fund this leftard hate speech?
Dont accept it.!
Subsidized stupidity.
Could someone please explain exactly what sort of useful contribution, purpose and social benefit does a degree in Globalization Studies afford?
My guess its another completely useless drain on academic resources and for those poor misguided young souls that actually had to sit and listen to those two twats Blakeney and Hall, its several hours of their lives they can never get back.
These men are dangerous and are infecting the minds of our youth… yet another University I must add to the growing list of those my kids will never attend. If your an Alumni – SHAME.
Klein quote comes to mind…”you can slide a lot further on bull sh-t, than on gravel!
Lieberals…so open minded their brains have fallen out!
Klein quote comes to mind…”you can slide a lot further on bull sh-t, than on gravel!”
Lieberals…so open minded their brains have fallen out!
Since you asked, ‘Let their funding be stopped’ translates into Latin as:
“Permissum suum crumens exsisto subsisto.”
Ain’t the internet great!
This stuff is nothing more than the internet version of the tabloids one sees in the check-out lines at the grocery store. In the same way that some people believe that everything they read in newspaper is true, some people believe that everything they read on the internet is true. Congenital gullibility is endemic in the population. Very few people are actually capable of analytical thought.
To think that some people believed that access to computers would raise the general level of knowledge and intelligence.
I am not a psychiatry expert but isn’t this guy a new sort of nutbar?
None of these bozos has actually ever seen a building which had been prepped for demolition. There would be large bundles of explosives on every supporting column with strands of primaline between them.
How in the world would the thousands of people who went to work that day fail to notice? How would they fail to notice the installation of so much software?
The conspiracy theorists are, in a word, delusional.
The University of Lethbridge has always been Alberta’s university of last resort. Blakeney and Hall are a practical illustration of why that is so.
“The University of Lethbridge has always been Alberta’s university of last resort. Blakeney and Hall are a practical illustration of why that is so.”
Not so but this idiot does the school no favours.
why is a prominent member of the asteroid class dinosaurs being cited here?
oh, I remember, dealing with the hypocritical right wing.
Globalization Studies? That’s a new one. Must be affiliated with the English Department. That’s Mormon country down there so I don’t imagine there would be many takers for that program. I assume that the good prof is an adherent to the Rosie School of Steelmaking. (I believe that that the U of L actually has a Physics Department). I suspect though, that he spends a bit too much time roaming in the coulees communing with the coyotes and howling at the moon.
I quit the program after my 3rd year of Agriculture at U of L because I couldn’t deal with my tenured agriculture profs that were openly anti-agriculture and seemed to center their programs around organic food production. Hard to believe that could occur in such an agriculture-based city like Lethbridge.
Tony Hall has been a well-known embarrassment to that institution for decades already. It’s not like no one has ever complained before.
One possible interpretation of EBD’s entry goes like this. Step one: go to each university and find one or two nitwits in one or two departments or programs or even faculties, and step two: on that basis argue that a political action should be launched in the name of directing students away from that institution and defunding it.
But that can’t possibly be what’s being argued, because that argument is ridiculous. I can find one or two nitwits in every university, and so that argument would logically entail the end of all universities, which would mean the end of all training of doctors and engineers. Which is ridiculous.
So, my question is: what is being argued here? That a couple of nitwits have been correctly identified? Whoopee! That they should be fired? On what legal grounds? That the problem can be shown to extend across the entire university (which is not shown above) and so then in that case the university should be in some way sanctioned?
Or maybe it’s that doctors and engineers and other useful people shouldn’t be trained in universities and then we could shut the universities down. Would that make you happy? Or would you just go on to find one or two nitwits in whatever institutions the useful people are then being trained in, and restart this entire argument?
Is the question being addressed here about making universities and those aspects of their existence that exert a positive influence on our lives better, for example perhaps by arguing with their nitwits, in public, or is what’s being addressed here simply emotional populist demagoguery a few steps detached from reality?
This is slightly tangent to the discussion but Gates predicts that bricks and mortar universities will face serious competition in the near future.
“Five years from now on the Web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university … college, except for the parties, needs to be less place-based…only technology can bring that down, not just to $20,000 but to $2,000. So yes, place-based activiy in that college thing will be five times less important than it is today.”
In that scenario, courses that do not require labs will be transferred to e-learning which will free up space and money for engineering, medicine, high tech, applied science, etc. Nitwits like Blakeney will be driven out because they cannot compete with sane and interesting profs. on the internet.
“Maybe it’s that doctors and engineers and other useful people shouldn’t be trained in universities and then we could shut the universities down.”
It doesn’t have a faculty of medicine or engineering, Vitruvius. It’s a Liberal Arts University.
“Is the question being addressed here about making universities and that aspects of their existence that exert a positive influence on our lives better…”
Yes.
When a University hires professors who in effect blame the Jews – “Mossad agents…celebrating the 9/11 attacks” – for the events of 9/11, then “political action,” – oooh – in the form of one person’s suggestion that people not send their kids there for their Liberal arts education – is perfectly reasonable.
In a democracy, Vitruvius, anyone is free to either advocate the U of Lethbridge, or to advocate NOT attending the University of Lethbridge. Your opinion on that is every bit as irrelevant as you consider mine to be.
Quite: your opinion on that is every bit as relevant as you consider mine to be.
“Little Eichmann” Ward Churchill changed his name and moved north!! Or is this Allan Blakeney’s grandson?
Vitruvious; I normally find your comments interesting, but sometimes you really find a need to talk down to all of us. Cheers
I know of a student that is going to first year at LaLaLethbridge. She never had enough credits to get in and very bad marks. They phoned her school and they managed to scrape up enough credits to get in. I had to explain to her she did not need a U-haul to move her stuff to res because there isn’t enough room for a quarter of it. She thought dorm rooms were like a house. That is the type of person the epitome of intellectualism Lethbridge attracts.
It’s not really the future engineers or doctors that I’m concerned about having to deal with the “one or two nitwits” instructing in their departments. Some of these universities have become so ingrained with far-left “social science” professors that they end up offering such obviously completely useless degrees in politically-fabricated program studies such as “Globalization Studies”.
Which is fine if you don’t mind being served coffee at a local restaurant by a Black Bloc-sympathizing, anti-capitalist, global warming alarmist, neo-Marxist, Christian-a-phobe in a Che t-shirt with a degree in “Globalization Studies” from the University of Lethbridge, whose education was hugely subsidized by the people they hate the most.
Defund these universities now.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could specify which faculties our tax dollars should support? I know where mine wouldn’t go.
Vίtruvius, can you provide a reference to the other blog posts that have been done that would allow for an interpretation that what EBD is doing is “go(ing) to each university and find one or two nitwits etc. etc.”.
If this was the case, then this would presumably be only one in an ongoing series of such posts.
One possible interpretation of your post is that you had nothing to really add to the discussion so you decided to be a pr*ck instead.
My apologies, Mike, let me assure you that it is
simply a case of happy exuberance. G’night, folks.
He holds the Hedy Fry endowed chair for Cross Burning.
I’m embarassed to admit that I studied at the UofL in the late ’80s-early ’90s – it’s my hometown university – and Hall was generally regarded as a crank even then, at that time largely for his frothing-at-the-mouth defense of any and all Indian land claims. He’s kind of a mantle figurine for loony left positions and an exemplar of the problems with the tenure system.
Vitruvius- I humbly suggest a Nitwit Detection/Verification Profiling/Assessment Manifest:
Characterization:
-Greying, dishevelled, self-barbered comb-over.
-Unkempt, untrimmed salt-and-pepper beard.
-Wool/tweed sports jacket circa 1983, un-ironed, elbow-patched, and with the obligatory turtleneck.
-Spectacles- normally a decade or two passe.
-Politics- anti-conservative, anti-development, anti-religion, pro-radical, anti-common sense.
-Tenured, pompous, dismissing, superiority air.
-Lingualese- normally the hauty English inflection, despite probably never having travelled beyond their provincial borders.
Oh, and as a pre-emptive, I request I be exempted from any, or the foregoing profiling. Thank-you.
Vitruvius: “So, my question is: what is being argued here? That a couple of nitwits have been correctly identified? Whoopee! That they should be fired? On what legal grounds?”
Oh, I don’t know. Most institutions have certain standards that must be met. Hospitals, for example, will not allow quacks access to their patients. They also have an obligation, as recipients of public funds, to maintain rigorous standards of hygiene and stuff. Why should universities be any different? Could we not have minimum expectations for scholarly research? Since when are publicly funded universities expected to be incubators of loony-toon indoctrination? If I was an alumnus of the U of Lethbridge, I’d certainly be letting them know they won’t be getting one red cent from me until they clean up their act. The U of S Native Studies department is just about as bad.
Tony Hall is generally seen as a first rate nut bar by most people in Lethbridge. Unfortunately, the U of L has always been a rats nest of NDP types. In fact, the perennial NDP candidate both provincially and federally in this case is a retired U of L psych prof.
There are some very good programs at the U of L, and some very bad ones, just like any University or College in Canada. The rule of buyer beware still applies.
My. God. Listened to about 90 seconds of the youtube interview. Only the CBC would air this nonsense.
I love that “thoroughly debunked” stuff. Poor Uncle
Osama really thinks that his men did it.
Nice bit about Che Guevara. He was one coooooool sadistic killer.
A nice touch: Che’s unfortunate victims could
smell him when he entered a room.
As an alumnus of the U of L, I say that actually there are a number of first rate programs there. In Education, Business, Kinesiology, Psychology, Psychics you are not likely to find a better school in Alberta. In my time, only the U of S had a better Management program in Western Canada. The successes normally come from very small classes and access to professors who at that time, hadn’t done a ton of research so they could devote their time to teaching.
However, as a liberal arts university it also has some seriously off-the-wall profs (Tony Hall being one of the current examples).
I never much liked the liberal arts courses that were part of the breadth requirement in the first 2 years of any degree but as I have got older, I think that having some wing-nut professors actually allowed me to get ready for the real world.
There will always be people who see the world differently than we do. But everyone needs to learn the skill of identifying the nutbars and handle their opinions accordingly. Hopefully, anyone who gets to complete their degree will have developed those critical thinking skills.
You know I have to agree with Vitruvius. What’s up with this air of hostility to Universities anyways? What if say you shut down all social science, and leave science, engineering and medicine? So you’d have no economists, archeologists, or historians. Those are arguably useful people to have in a society no?
Maybe a better solution is to actually oh you know, arm kids with historical and analytical capabilities, the world view you want them to have and the confidence to defend it? Instead of having kids just running around believing every Sarah Palin/Tea Party/Religion of Peace press release that comes out saying “durrr lots of people there must be right!” Every movement is better off with bandwagon jumpers right?
Honestly how many crazy disagreeable person can you defund? You can’t defund them all even if you did George Soros and Ted Turner will give all the moonbats 2 dollars for every 1 you take away. 😀
M, in light of the fact that I made a very specific – pointedly specific – case, and not a general one, about a particular, vile, and unacceptably politicized and – I would suggest – anti-Semitic faculty at a particular University whose professors think Israel – who else – was involved in the 9/11 attacks, asking “what’s with all this animosity to Universities anyway” is like asking critics of Obama or Chavez “What’s with all this animosity to human beings, anyway?”
I didn’t make one single reference to “universities” in the general sense.
Read Blakeney’s article, and the prospectus for Hall’s faculty; i’s not “higher learning”, it’s sheer, hard-left political advocacy – nothing more, nothing less. Merely *noting* that isn’t a shot at “universities” in the general sense.
Mohammed Elmasry is described as a teacher of microchip design at the University of Waterloo. One would think that he could be more useful imparting his knowledge in certain middle eastern locations where the state of technological progress has yet to advance past rubbing two sticks together. I.e., not Israel, but any or all of the others.
Look yeah it’s hard left advocacy but like I said you can’t defund them all. You can’t honestly say that all universities have to be politically neutral. Always remember it goes both ways. What if someone taught accurate Islamic history. What with all the hot hot sex with children and throwing infidels into rivers. That’s awfully bigoted and racist too. That will be the clarion call. The whole point of tenured professors is so that they can say these things without getting fired. Even if it doesn’t work out how we like.
Besides the whole Zionist conspiracy junk is pretty widespread anyhow. If it’s not this people will blame the j00s for other things, flotillas, accidental explosions on account of bringing grenades to weddings, hamas naval mines floating up to the sea shore and the list of “atrocities” goes on. It’s like 10 years and you still see protest signs for a “real” 9/11 investigation. You’ll never get rid of these guys, besides everyone knows the jews used an invisible spaceship and blasted the twin towers with an independence day laser. What did Bush know and when did he know it?
Speaking of truthers just look at the CBC the only time I’ve seen them say ‘decide for yourself’ is with a whole hour long segment of truther claptrap. Though the CBC should be defunded for other reasons.
Also I say university hate because I get the general feeling that when certain issues come up you get all the crazies with a chip on their shoulder coming out of the woodwork. What do we need universities for? Entitlement generation! blah blah. Golly I’m tired. Apologies one and all for my rambling.
Incidentally, has anyone else noticed how El Presidente Hugo seems to have been dropped like a hot rock by the “progressives”?
Is it possible his nutty and erratic behaviour has become too embarrassing even for them?
M, wouldn’t it be great if universities and schools actually taught real Islamic history instead of hushing up any criticism of it. Reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s books gives one a great insight into the history and mindset of the Islamic world. I could feel the room closing in with the rigid control of every facet of your life. It is the leftist cloud dwellers like Hall and his ilk that attack us for questioning the violence and threat of Islam.
Gives one a real understanding of why Pakistan and India are moving rapidly in such different directions, India into the modern age with ET’s middle class and Pakistan dying as just another muslim hell hole.
Watching the students and the aging hippies waving their communist flags and chanting their mantra with their Che t-shirts at the G20 just makes wonder where they learned all this crap. More importantly why do they believe it.
Thanks for pointing this out EBD.
Does Barbie Hall have a brother?
My old university U of W doesn’t get any money from me as long as “Every Jew’s a righteous target” Elmasary has a job there.
Non Pecuniae Fiant – Let there be no money.
These folks are not just wrong, they are evil. Fire. Them. All.
what a couple of nut job’s
Paul in calgary